PET-MRI....

I saw this headline and almost jumped. Until I realized what it actually was. Check it out!

Jeez!

Writing papers - KEM Hospital and a story of possibilities

Residents in India keep complaining about the lack of opportunity for writing articles. Excuses abound; no documentation, no experience or guidance, no access to previous articles, no access to "Instructions for Authors", no time, no secretarial help, etc...

Of these probably the only important issue may be that of guidance. If there are people who can guide in writing the article properly, I am sure the rest of the issues can get sorted out pretty easily.

KEM Hospital for example has always had a rich culture of writing. It is not that there are better cases seen at KEM than at the other institutes or that it has "better" residents. What it has is a culture of "writing" that all successive residents build upon.

To take just one example. One resident, Ashwin Asrani, has seven articles retrievable in a Pubmed search with his name. Two, are in the Journal of Postgraduate Medicine, which is a local KEM journal that is indexed. Just one article is a series report, the rest are case reports. Yet, he already has one article in Radiology and two in the Journal of Utrasound in Medicine.

There is no earth-shaking research that he has done...it is difficult to do good research in our departments. But with just case reports (which all institutes have by the dozen), perseverance and a good choice of journals, he has managed to get seven articles published and I am sure there are some more in the pipeline.

The reason for using Ashwin's example is to show that it is possible to get articles published internationally. And excuses to the contrary are just that....excuses...which as Indians, we are so great at making...whether it is journal writing or the Olympics. With Internet access, Pubmed is available everywhere. A large number of journals have free access to articles more than 1-2 years old. Many journals (for example the entire BMG group) have free full-text access from India. Computers have made the task of "writing" and "correcting" so much easier. Submission in most cases now is electronic, saving the Rs. 1000 odd that we had to spend on international courier charges. What more does one want? More excuses....?

Lymphomatoid granulomatosis - case report

There is an interesting case report in Thorax, of a smoker who developed a large cavitating lesion in the left lower lobe with multiple lung nodules. This would have been considered to be malignant unless proved otherwise. The eventual diagnosis was of lymphomatoid granulomatosis.

All articles in Thorax can be fully accessed from India.

Abdominal quiz case in the British Journal of Radiology

There is a nice abdominal quiz case in the recent August issue of the British Journal of Radiology.

This article can be accessed as full text from India.

A similar case was also put up as a weekly quiz at the REF site, earlier this year.

Siemens Espree - Open Bore 1.5T MRI

Siemens has introduced an open-bore 1.5T system called the Espree that is almost the shape of a CT scanner. Most examinations therefore (except for brain and cervical spine) can be performed with the head out.

As Scanman at Diagnostic Imaging points out in his column, this does change the way the whole "open" issue will be played out in the future. Traditional open systems will probably die out...in fact the only reason for low-Tesla scanners is because they are open and cheap. With competition and more and more people installing 1.5T systems, the death of low-Tesla open systems is guaranteed.

What will happen with the Stand-Up system sold by Fonar is difficult to predict.

The downside of this system? Though I couldn't find specs on the Siemens site, it appears that the FoV is only 30cm. This can create a problem for abdominal and spine studies, though it should not affect whole spine screening, etc due to the TIM concept.

With Espree and with TIM, Siemens seems to have moved pretty far ahead of its competition, at least this year.

MDCT versus EBCT

Auntminnie.com has an editorial by Rumberger and Ehrlich on how 4 and 8 slice scanners are not upto the mark as compared to EBCT for calcium scoring.

As mentioned in an earlier post about articles in Radiology on coronary artery imaging, these statements are essentially disingenious. When everyone today is moving towards 64 and 40 slice scanners, that is what we should be talking about. And yes, though the data is currently non-existing for these scanners, extrapolating the data from EBCT based on the technology and methodology cannot be considered out of place. The new 64 slice scanners have a better temporal and spatial resolution than EBCT scanners and therefore should be assumed to be equivalent if not better.